A parent cooperative for young children

September 2012

Welcome to the start of another great school year! We’re so excited to meet our new students and see all the familiar faces from last year. Thanks so much to everyone for your hard work at the cleaning bees and playground cleanup. Everything looks wonderful and ready for our preschoolers and two-year olds!

Just a reminder that we do go outside every day, so please send your child prepared for any kind of weather and with good shoes for running and climbing. Our playground can be muddy, so boots are often a good choice and as we head into fall jackets will soon become a necessity. Feel free to leave extra clothes on your child’s hook or cubby.

Please remember that drop off is 9 am. The teaching staff is busy in the morning preparing for the day’s activities and isn’t able to give early students adequate attention. The end of the day is also a great time to touch base with any of the teachers about any questions or concerns that come up. Feel free to join us on the playground and check in.

We’ll have our first parent committee meeting on Tuesday, September 18th at 6:30 pm. This is a great opportunity to meet other parents and find out what’s happening at the school. Children are welcome to play while we talk. Don’t miss our Meet & Greet picnic on Sunday, September 23rd at Taughannock Park near the playground. Bring a dish to share; we’ll meet at 4:30 pm. and eat at 5:00.

Don’t forget to bring in your family photo for our bulletin board, and scrapbook page for our preschool children. And remember, if you have any special requests for parent helper days, just let me know ahead of time. I can be reached easily by email or phone. Feel free to call me at home – although my family is not great with messagesJ.

If you haven’t signed up for a parent job yet, the list is on the parent info bulletin board at the top of the stairs. We’re still looking for a couple of fundraising committee chairs to help keep the committee members on task and someone to help Rachel run parent meetings and take notes.

The MWF class will hike to the falls on Wednesday, September 26th (weather permitting). We’ll be looking for signs of fall. Anyone is welcome to join us for the hike – it’s a great fieldtrip to bring younger siblings on.

September Activities: Our themes for September will be friendship, manners, and autumn. We will start the month by reading a wonderful book, Hondo and Fabian by Peter McCarty. We will spend some time talking about how to be a good friend and appropriate school behavior. We will make some cooperative murals for our classrooms, puppets, play with shaving cream and figure out how old all our students are. Our next book will be Achoo! by Mij Kelly. We’ll talk about manners, make a barn collage and salt-dough animals. We’ll end the month with the book When the Leaf Blew In by Steve Metzger. We’ll make a fall floral sculpture, leaf collage, leaf rubbings and leaf patterning and hike to the falls.

Terrific Two’s: Welcome to The Terrific Twos! Deva and I are very excited to get the year started. We have been planning and organizing in our classroom to be ready for our first day with your children. Please feel welcome to come in and enjoy our space with us at any time. We are starting September with familiar books and objects in our classroom. In our first couple weeks we will read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. during our circle time. We will talk a lot about friends and manners in school to start the year. To end the month we will welcome fall with Fresh Fall Leaves by Betsy Franco. We are looking forward to exploring the changes happening all around us outside and look for changes in our classroom too. Remember a good breakfast and comfortable clothes, we are very busy!